Jamie raised a brow like he was entirely serious.
Huh. Maybe he meant it. I supposed they had managed to stay in the league as long as they had due to their obsessive workouts or something. Kind of like Jagr, although I doubted either of them would keep playing as long as Jagr had.
“Your dad said Luke signed with a team in Germany,” Jamie said conversationally.
Luke was my older brother. He was a hockey player, too. He’d played in college, hoping that he’d get signed by an NHL team after graduation, but that hadn’t happened—and he was almost positive it was because he’d officially come out of the closet at the end of last season. I wasn’t sure that was the only reason no one had signed him, but in the end, the reason didn’t matter. He was heading off to Europe to try to reach his dreams the hard way.
I nodded. “Too bad he doesn’t speak a lick of German.”
“He’ll figure out the important stuff soon enough.”
Which likely meant the awful curse words and insults, and maybe a few hockey terms. Although, as long as he could pronounce his teammates’ names and raise his stick in the air, he’d probably be fine. Hockey was relatively universal.
Jamie moved to the other counter and heated up the waffle iron.
“What are we making, anyway?” I asked cautiously. Knowing my brother-in-law, there wouldn’t be waffles cooking in that waffle iron. He had some interesting alternative cooking methods. His food tasted good, but getting to the finished product was sometimes a confusing prospect, particularly for someone like me, who actually did know how to cook.
“Chopping up a salad to go with a waffled ham-and-cheese omelet.”
Waffled omelets. Allrighty then. I ducked my head and concentrated on my cucumber chopping to avoid laughing in his face. Besides, beggars can’t be choosers, and don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Or something.
“So,” he said when he returned to his pepper chopping. “Most of the guys’ll be back by this weekend. Katie thinks we need to throw a party Saturday night to kick off the season.”
Saturday night. That was only two days from now. My mind kicked into overdrive.
“At Burnzie’s house?” I asked without trying to sound too interested, even though I was already racking my brain to figure out how I’d finagle my invitation. The truth was that I didn’t truly belong if this party was for the players and their significant others, but since Katie was married to Jamie, and my father was one of the coaches, I could probably sneak in without anyone saying anything. And Harry would almost definitely be there.
Keith Burns, Harry’s usual defensive partner, had an enormous mansion on the river, and for years, he’d hosted all sorts of parties for the guys. I’d been to a few of them, back when I was still a kid living with my parents. I doubted he and his wife, Brie, would care if I tagged along.
But Jamie shook his head. “We wanted to do it here. Brie’s pregnant again, so we didn’t want to ask her to do all the work of getting ready for it. Especially not last minute.”
Here? I had to bite my tongue to keep from squealing in celebration. There wasn’t any chance Jamie and Katie would try to keep me away.
Harry wouldn’t know what hit him.
DAMN IT ALL to hell and back if Dani Weber wasn’t parked in the pickup lane when I walked out of baggage claim to find a cab. She was more annoying and determined than a blood-sucking mosquito, now that she’d gotten a taste of me.
That girl needed someone to set her straight. Fuck, but I wanted that someone to be me, even though that couldn’t happen. Not now and not ever.
I tugged my cap down lower and hoped she hadn’t seen me, walking on by. Maybe she was here to pick up a girlfriend from school, or maybe her brother was flying into town for the weekend. Lord only knew why she was here, but it was shitty timing, as far as I was concerned. I’d only been back in Portland for about twelve minutes, and I’d already practically walked straight into her.
She honked her horn and crept up alongside me, rolling down her window. “Hey! Need a ride?” So much for that small glimmer of hope. Her bright-red lips curled up in a seductive smile that made me think all sorts of things that were inappropriate, considering the promise I’d made to Webs.
To stay the fuck away from his baby girl. To keep my hands off her.
This girl turned me on like no other, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was I’d royally fucked up, and Webs had been the one to bail me out, so I owed him. There were only two things he’d asked of me: to keep my nose clean, and to stay away from Dani. Because he knew way too much about my private life, and he didn’t want me getting his younger daughter tangled up in it.
Granted, what she chose to do with her private life wasn’t any of his business, but he didn’t exactly see things that way. And he was in a position to turn my life on its head if he wanted to. So, out of respect for him, and out of a desire to keep my head down and my nose out of trouble, I’d agreed. I might not like it, but I’d agreed.
Too bad no one had managed to get her to read the memo. It wasn’t for lack of trying on my part. I’d told her outright that there couldn’t be anything between us. I’d done my best to brush her off without completely hurting her feelings. Hell, I’d even tried to convince the world—including my teammates—that I had a longtime girlfriend, but we’d tried to keep our relationship private.
None of it had worked. At all. The more I tried to push Dani away, the more she kept coming back.
And good lord, if she wasn’t looking hotter than ever with the way her sweater was hugging her chest. That only made me think of those curvy hips and that tight, round ass. God, I wanted to get my hands on her ass.
And this wasn’t helping at all.
“Just grabbing a cab,” I said, forcing my thoughts back into line and trying once again to give her the brush-off.
“I can take you wherever you need to go. Got nothing else to do this afternoon, anyway.”
“Shouldn’t you wait for your friend or whoever you’re picking up? I don’t want to intrude.” That might not be enough excuse for her, though. Dani was as persistent a woman as I’d ever met when she got it in her head that she wanted something.
And lately, she wanted me. If only she were anyone else… I’d take her up on anything she offered if her last name wasn’t Weber.
In a flash.
This girl checked all of my boxes and had me itching to give her what she seemed to want from me, and more.
“I’m here to give you a ride, silly.” She put the car in park and climbed out, coming around to try to take one of my bags from me.
My eyes flared at her calling me silly. There wasn’t anything silly about the things she did to me. And there wasn’t a chance in hell I could let her put my luggage in her car. The last thing I needed right now was to find myself alone with this woman. Because then I might end up doing exactly what I shouldn’t—grabbing her ass, pushing her against the wall, slamming my cock inside her…
I tightened my grip and held on. “Uh, thanks?” I said, continuing toward the cab stand. “Already paid in advance for a cab, though, so…”
But her hand closed over mine on the handle of my wheeled suitcase. It was warm and soft, and she was a hell of a lot stronger than she ought to be, considering how petite and curvy she was.
There was no denying it: Dani Weber made me nervous. And I didn’t like it. No woman had exerted a similar effect on me, not since I was about fourteen and fumbling around with my first girlfriend. But I wanted to back Dani up against her car and kiss the hell out of those pouty lips until they were as red underneath as her lipstick made them, and the fact that I couldn’t do that made me nervous.
Because she was right here. And she was pushing all the right—wrong?—buttons. And I was afraid I was going to give in.
Her fingers twisted until she curled her hand around the handle, somehow beneath mine, and she gave my bag a solid tug. Those nerves were the only reason
she managed to get the suitcase away from me, or so I wanted to believe. Either way, she had my carry-on and was wheeling it toward her car, so I had no choice but to follow her.
She popped her trunk and hefted the bag inside before I caught up with her.
“Aren’t you supposed to be back in Seattle by now?” I grumbled, debating whether to take the suitcase out again. The new semester at her fashion design school should have started up in the last couple of weeks, I would have assumed. I hadn’t even given a thought to the fact that she’d still be around Portland when I arrived. I wasn’t prepared to fend her off right away, because I’d thought I’d have at least a few weeks before she came back to visit her family for a long weekend or some school holiday or another. But here she was, and I wasn’t even close to ready for whatever she had planned.
“Dropped out. I’m starting up my own fashion line, so I’ll be sticking around home for good now.”
Talk about dropping a bomb on me. Having her around town all season was going to do a real number on my resolve, especially if she continued to behave in such a determined manner all the time. She picked up my larger bag, grinning like the Cheshire cat. That one was far too heavy for her, though, so even though I should be taking all of my things out of her car and leaving, I found myself lifting the suitcase away from her and settling it into her trunk.
“Come on,” she said, slamming the trunk closed before heading back toward the driver’s-side door and leaving me staring after her, watching the sway of her ass while I tried to remember how to put my tongue back in my mouth. She winked over her shoulder at me. “Let’s get out of here. You hungry? We can stop for a bite to eat before I drop you off at your place…” She sat down, still chattering away like she didn’t care if I heard a word she’d said or not because she just wanted to hear herself talk.
There wasn’t any getting around it now. She had my stuff in her trunk, so even though I’d promised her father I’d keep my distance, I had no choice but to let her drive me to my house.
And then, I could go inside and shut her out.
I had to if I wanted to stick around Portland this season. David Weber might not be the general manager, but we were due to have a logjam on defense this season, at least if Jens managed to get healthy, and I was the most likely candidate to get shipped out of town if that were to happen. If I put one toe out of line, Webs would be shouting from the rooftops for the team to send me elsewhere.
With that firmly in mind, I let myself into his daughter’s car and did my damnedest not to notice the way her blue-green sweater was hugging her tits, or how her sleek brown hair curled around her shoulders, and definitely not how she kept licking those impossibly kissable red lips.
Because it didn’t matter how much she wanted me or I wanted her. This wasn’t about a flirtation—harmless or otherwise.
This was about my future.
I couldn’t fuck this up.
AFTER (FINALLY) GETTING Dani to drop me off at my house with my bags that afternoon—somehow she’d dragged me into going out for coffee with her, an outing she clearly intended to be along the lines of a date—I needed to blow off some steam like nobody’s business. She’d all but thrown herself at me, despite my reminders that I’d promised her father to stay away from her. In the end, I’d had to resort to lying to her face in order to get her to take me home.
I’m not interested. Not now and not ever. You’re not my type, Dani, so you might as well just give it up as a lost cause. Those words kept playing in my head for an hour while I tried to get her sexy-as-hell pouting lips out of my mind. But the fiery look in her eyes as she’d stalked out my front door hadn’t given off the look of a woman who’d just been flat-out rejected. It was the look of a woman who was more determined than ever to get what she wanted.
Despite my good intentions, I might have made things worse. And I hadn’t been able to stop myself from staring at her ass as she’d left, which only served to leave me with a stiffy.
The sad truth was that the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on me. Not even close. I was more into Dani than was healthy; she very clearly wanted me.
We just couldn’t be together, no matter what either of us wanted.
Everything about her was exactly what I desired in a woman. She wasn’t too skinny, she had curves galore that I was desperate to sink my hands into, she’d tasted like the sinful side of heaven when she’d kissed me months ago… She was smart, spirited, and driven. She wasn’t into me solely because of my career, and she was already fully aware of the way playing professional hockey could strain a relationship because she’d grown up with it.
In a fair world, she could have any man she wanted. But this world wasn’t fair, and she didn’t want just any man. She wanted me.
This thing between us, whatever it might be, should be easy. Instead, it was hell. Because she was the forbidden fruit. And she was constantly dangling herself in front of me like a carrot.
I wanted to take a bite out of her.
As long as I’d been in the NHL, there had been tons of women who followed me and some of the other guys around, hoping to hook up. They were rampant throughout the league, thicker on the ground in some cities than others. Puck bunnies.
But that wasn’t Dani. She’d grown up around hockey and hockey players. Her father had played for a couple of decades, and he’d been coaching since his retirement. She was part of the family, so she wasn’t some wide-eyed, star-struck chick who just wanted to bag an athlete who had a hefty bank account. If I could fit her into the puck bunny column in my head, I might be in better shape.
But she didn’t belong there any more than she belonged with me, and sitting around my house with images of her flashing through my head wasn’t helping. If anything, I was only getting harder.
There was only one thing I could do to help the situation, and I knew it.
So I took a shower and got dressed, making sure to put on a bow tie and a sweater vest so I’d fit the role expected of me. Then I headed off to the club, Leather & Lace, with my mask in hand.
It didn’t matter that it was a weeknight. Surely some of the regulars would be there, including a naughty schoolgirl who would want nerdy Professor OTK to give her a good spanking.
And if that wasn’t enough to get Dani Weber out of my head, I doubted there was anything in the world that would do the trick.
THERE’D ALWAYS BEEN something unique for me about the experience of spanking a willing woman. Yeah, it was kinky, and spanking and other similar fetishes were definitely not for everyone. But I’d always gotten off on it before. Watching the skin pink up. Feeling the heat under my palm. Watching her writhe and squirm beneath me, but only because she was enjoying the hell out of herself and wanted more.
I wasn’t exactly a sadist in the truest sense of the word. I didn’t get off on spanking because of causing pain. My fascination had always been more with the role playing, the exchange of power.
There was a place somewhere before reaching true pain, when a submissive could experience a certain sense of euphoria that was unlike anything else on this earth. Over the years, I’d learned to take a woman over the brink into a mind-blowing orgasm, and it had nothing to do with sex. She and I could both be fully clothed. No sexual contact at all. Hell, the climaxes a woman might reach through a sound spanking could be far better than sex. And that was my true kink—watching a woman come and knowing I’d been the one to cause it.
I knew about the intensity of these kinds of orgasms firsthand, because I’d allowed myself to submit before discovering I was more of a dominant at heart. In my early days coming to Leather & Lace, back when I was a fresh-faced kid getting my start in the NHL, I’d thought I wanted to give up control. I wanted someone else to be in charge, because learning to be a pro meant that every aspect of my life had to be fully regimented—what, when, and how much I ate; when, where, and how long I slept; how much I lifted and what types of cardio I did in the gym—and I needed a way to let go of it all.
>
Turned out that even when I was bent over a Domme’s lap with her paddling my ass, I was still the one in charge.
We had to agree to everything we were going to do before it was done. I had a safe word and could wield it at any time, and then everything would stop. And I do mean everything. If it was too much, all I had to do was tap out, and it was over. Took me a while to realize I was still the one in control when I was subbing, but once I did…everything changed for me.
So one night, she’d suggested we flip the script and do a little role play. She said she’d be a naughty schoolgirl in need of a punishment, and I could be the principal with nothing but the palm of my hand to teach her a lesson. We had both been fully clothed the whole time—there wasn’t anything sexual about the scene—but she’d come harder than anything I’d ever witnessed before.
And that was all it took. I was hooked. I finally really understood what got me off—getting women off. But not in the way people normally expected.
So that was what I’d done tonight, in an effort to get Dani Weber out of my head. I went to the club and spanked a couple of women until they climaxed like never before.
It didn’t work. For them it did, but not for me.
Two of the regulars came to me at Leather & Lace, and I happily gave them what they asked me for. They both got their rocks off. I headed home with a sore hand and the boner to end all boners, because I’d spent the entire night imagining it was Dani’s curvy ass turning pink and hot, jiggling under my palm.
Now I was home again, lying in bed and trying to jerk one off so I could get some sleep.
Not that I really thought it would be enough, but it was worth a try. I had to do something to get that woman out of my mind.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand. At first, I thought to ignore it. It might be one of the women from the club looking for more than what I’d given her. Not that I ever took them up on the offers, and I never gave out my number to anyone there, but some of them still managed to get their hands on it from time to time. That was one of the perils of being something of a local celebrity or whatever we were as professional athletes. Chicks were constantly managing to track us down no matter how private we tried to be.
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